After Parkland, everything is different: NRA's in decline and gun control is possible
House Democrats will pass a gun control bill this week — amazingly, Senate Republicans may go along. It's a new day

Sophia Tesfaye
February 13, 2019 12:00PM (UTC)

The Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee is expected to pass a gun control bill on Wednesday. Some of the most vulnerable House Democrats, including those elected in previously red districts, have said they would support gun control bills as expansive as a ban on assault-style weapons. Many of them ran on an unabashed push for increased gun control in the midterm elections and beat GOP incumbents backed by the National Rifle Association. This sweeping shift in the gun debate comes on the one-year anniversary of the Feb. 14, 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. That's no accident.

Gun control measures failed to gain traction in Congress in the immediate aftermath of the Parkland shooting. But that was with Republicans in complete control on Capitol Hill. The activist movement driven by Parkland survivors has clearly of shifted the political climate around gun-safety legislation, and was a major factor in flipping the House to the Democrats last November.

An Associated Press survey found that 8 percent of midterm voters called guns the top issue facing the nation. While that's not a remarkable percentage in itself, those voters broke for Democrats over Republicans better than four to one. Nearly 80 percent of the 62 freshman Democrats elected in the midterms ran on increased gun control. According to a Reuters analysis, that figure far outstripped the proportion of candidates who did so in 2016. The NRA was even outspent by gun control groups in last year's election, for the first time in recent history.

Parkland has served as a watershed moment, and gun control advocates have seized it.

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